On the night of August 12, 2020, we got a call from the Madison Police. My mom heard a noise on her bedroom window screen. My mom is legally blind, so she couldn’t really see anything in the dark, but she assumed it was a squirrel and closed the window. A few moments later, she heard the same noise on her other bedroom window.
Then she realized someone was breaking into her apartment.
She called the police; they arrived; the perpetrator was never identified or caught. From that night forward, a member of our family spent the night at Mom’s apartment for the next several months.
Mom’s neighborhood had been going downhill. There were shootings within a block of her apartment. One time, Kim and I needed to walk past a drug deal in progress in order to get to her front door.
Mom said she would move if—and only if—we would build an apartment onto our modest home so she could live with us but still have her own place.
We didn’t have the money.
Stalemate.
The week after July 4, 2021, Mom made a couple trips to the emergency room. After an initial misdiagnosis, it was finally determined that she had a bowel obstruction. She spent the next five weeks in the hospital including emergency surgery one night when she nearly died.
After that, my wife Kim became Mom’s full time caregiver.
Since Mom’s apartment was 45 minutes from our home, that meant that Kim spent most of the week—sometimes the entire week there.
It started out as a temporary arrangement. It became permanent. On a good week, Kim was home for the weekend. On a bad week, she wasn’t home at all.
That was getting old.
So in the summer of 2023, we revisited the idea of adding an apartment onto our home. This time we were able to secure funding, and we made the decision to move forward.
Since July 2023 my life has revolved around working with contractors to:
- move the propane tank
- cut down more than a dozen trees (I hate cutting down trees, but I had no choice)
- have plans drafted
- get zoning and building permits and inspections
- excavate (dig a big hole with heavy equipment)
- put plumbing in place
- pour an insulated concrete slab
- build exterior and interior walls
- install windows
- expand the septic drain field
- open up our attic to discover we had mold from improperly installed bathroom vents; get that remediated
- put roof trusses in place
- tie in electric and plumbing
- add shingles and siding
- install insulation and drywall
- finish the drywall and paint
- pick out, buy, and install flooring, doors, trim, light fixtures, and more
- install a previously owned kitchen (that Kim had the foresight to snag several months earlier)
and a hundred other details.
Sometimes that involved hands-on work by yours truly. More often it involved making brownies and cookies for workers, listening to their stories, and being a friend.
Somewhere early on, God spoke to me and said, “This is your full time job—getting your mom moved.” So I put everything else that wasn’t essential on hold until…
The day before Valentines Day we got Mom moved to her new apartment, a four second walk from our kitchen.
I’m so grateful for all the help I received from many sources. Ron Benoy and his team were great as our general contractor. Mike and Zoe drove down from New Hampshire and spent more than two weeks helping us figure out and install much of the kitchen and bathroom, and helped in many other ways as well. My brother Dan contributed leftover LVP flooring which worked great and then he and Cindy drove up from Indiana to help on a couple different occasions. People helped financially—I don’t think it would be right to mention their names, but you know who you are, and please know how grateful we are. And of course, I’m skipping over many others who helped in many ways, not the least of which are my wife Kim, and our kiddos Liza, Hans, Alan, and Sally.
Now that Mom is moved in, I’m helping with a couple dozen odds and ends like getting her voter registration changed and installing a shelf above the hot water heater.
But I’m starting to turn my attention to what’s next. While I’m tempted to finish and publish two books I’ve been working on, I think the Lord wants me to focus my energies on building connections with people He wants to help through me.
That’s easier said than done. There’s a glut of Christian content out there, and I find it challenging to take the half second of attention I’m granted by a stranger and use it to convince them that I have something of value for them, something they won’t easily find somewhere else.
But I believe I have some direction from the Lord, and it looks like some of it will involve YouTube, so we’ll see what happens, and I’ll keep you posted.
Meanwhile, here’s a Facebook post you might find interesting.
And here are some photos from the building project:
Mom’s a little camera shy or I would have included a photo of her also. But I think she likes it here. And I’m so grateful to God for bringing her and my wife safely home.
Be blessed!
Dwight
